I’m sure most people have heard of the telegraph, but do you know the history behind it? Much like our computers and phones the telegraph was digital and changed the way messages were received in the 1800s!
The story of the telegraph starts with a French painter, Samuel Morse. While he was away, he received a letter informing him that his wife had fallen ill. Despite Morse rushing back, he not only missed his wife’s passing but also her funeral. Struck with grief and anger over not receiving the news sooner, Morse found motivation to become an inventor and devise a new way to communicate across distances.
Morse was not the first to conceive of this idea or attempt to create a telegraph, but he was the first to develop a new language for it. Before Morse, inventors had tried to convey messages using 26 wires for each letter of the alphabet. Morse, instead, created Morse code for people to learn and decode. Due to Morse code consisting of a series of short and long beeps, the telegraph is digital, as any errors that occur—such as beeps not being the exact length—can still be understood due to the finite number of options they could be.
Although we now know that Morse code can be broadcast, in its early development, a wire had to be run between the sender and recipient. Initially, the telegraph idea was not accepted by Congress when it was presented. However, by 1861, the East and West coasts were connected by telegraph. This connection was not as direct as it is today; since the distance the message could travel was limited, a message going from one side of the country to the other was sent short distances until it was relayed across the country (similar to a game of telephone!).
Despite the telegraph being digital, the analog telephone, invented by Alexander Bell in 1876 with the Centennial Phone, eventually surpassed the telegraph after the Second World War.
Proof read by Chat GPT